They most likely want or need to prove that they can reliably bring these things down in a controlled manner to a soft landing. They did the same thing with th

They most likely want or need to prove that they can reliably bring these things down in a controlled manner to a soft landing. They did the same thing with the early Falcon 9 landings, bringing them in to a "soft" landing over a set of GPS coordinates in the ocean. Once they can demonstrate this process to a certain degree, they can start working through the permitting process to try actually bringing them in over land.